Abandoned Korrasami
by eoraptor
Summary: An abandoned ficlet I recovered: Was written to be a followup to book 3: balance's climactic events.


_I wrote this shorty before the start of Book 4: Balance blew it out of the water and changed Korrasami from slash ship into canon. Please enjoy it while knowing it will never be finished. Feel free to comment on this alternative start to season 4._

\- **LoK-**

Asami looked on as Kora lay on her stomach next to the grande pool. Katara was again giving her a healing treatment, and it fascinated the heiress to watch the water from her large but fairly mundane pool suddenly float free and swirl in the air, magically animated above the Avatar's lower back.

Korra was the only water bender she'd known personally until Katara had come to act as her healer… and Korra, for all her growing talents, was not exactly one of the vaunted healers of the water tribes. So to see the water flow and gyrate smoothly, as opposed to crashing like a steam hammer or piercing in frozen shards was hypnotizing to the young industrialist. The household staff seemed to pay it no heed, and a few even looked askance at Asami for her ignorance.

Of course, they had had the ability to see healers at any of the local clinics scattered throughout Republic City. Asami Sato had been made to see only non-bending physicians of the post-bending era, owing to her father's paranoia of Benders after the death of his wife at the hand of bending criminals.

Shaking her head, she sighed, watching Korra lay so still for the treatment. It was haunting. When the heiress had met the southerner the first time, she had been a professional bender as well as a classically trained master AND the Avatar. Beyond her spiritual and bending gifts she had been at the very peak of physical condition.

Asami herself was no slouch in the gym, but Avatar Korra was in a league of her own. And even through a year and a half of almost non-stop trials; first from the Equalist Insurrection, and then from the Ice Tribe Civil War, and the ensuing chaos of Harmonic Convergence and its aftermath, Korra had been an unstoppable presence. Working alongside her in the Earth Kingdom against the Earth Queen's Dai Lee and against the Red Lotus fanatics had only driven home how she was so far beyond any athlete Asami knew.

So watching her lay there now, so listless, was heart-wrenching. It wasn't just that she was physically tired… Korra's body had wasted. While she had survived poisoning by quicksilver, a fate that would have killed any mere mortal in moments, deep damage had been done to her body. In the week after their return to Republic City, her health had still been perilous; for while the quicksilver had been taken from her body, its deadly work had already been done. Tissues damaged or killed by the liquid metal poisoned Korra's body as they made their way out.

Asami had only seen one of the many emergency treatments that had been needed to save Korra's life, but one was more than enough. Crystal clear blue water flowed onto her skin and disappeared beneath it, only to emerge seconds later, brown and foul smelling.

The industrialist shivered and held herself at the memory. The end result, once the worst of the crisis had past, was that Korra had lost nearly two stone of her weight. The once proud athlete was a shell of her former self physically and mentally, her cheeks sunken and her eyes hollow. Her body fared no better than her face, powerful limbs withered and her broad chest sunken. Korra may not have been classically feminine before, but had she been beautiful in her way. Now she was vaguely disturbing to look upon.

Asami was no doctor, but she wondered, could anyone recover from such damage? From what little she understood from her own private physicians, Korra had suffered injury to every part of her physical body. Katara didn't speak much of the healing Korra had to undergo, but Asami was also no fool; she could see the elderly woman's lined face tell a tale that was not good, her own wrinkles gradually deepening.

Sighing, Miss Sato turned, and then yelped, looking on a bald melon.

Jinora laughed and self-consciously rubbed her scalp, folding her glide staff behind her back with her other hand to bow, "I didn't mean to startle you."

Blushing, Asami shook her head and sighed tiredly before laughing, "No, it's okay, Guess I am still getting used to you with that ink on your head and no hair."

"You and me both," the young master giggled and nodded, "It still kinda itches. Daddy says I'll get used to it though."

Smirking a bit, Asami marveled at the devotion. She wondered if she would ever find any one thing she would feel so devoted to that she would want to mark it on her body. But to her the world was so busy and full or marvels to explore and people to meet that she doubted even a wedding ring would ever hold her finger.

Focusing, she inclined her head, "So, what can I do for you, Master Jinora?"

The bald young woman giggled again. It was one thing to be called Master by the air disciples, or by the people she'd met traveling with the nomads the last few weeks, but to be called that by someone she knew like Asami was still weird, and a treat.

"I wanted to see how you and Korra were." She nodded after a moment, looking past the heiress to the Avatar lying on the other side of the pool.

"Mmmhm?" Asami nodded. She knew Jinora was just back from five weeks touring the Earth Kingdom with the other senior Air Nomads, and she wondered why it was that the girl was not with her father, and her family.

"Is she… any better?" Jinora chewed her lip as she again looked to where her grandmother was tending to the Avatar.

"She has her good days and her bad," Asami admitted as she shared the glance. "I don't know if today is a good day or a bad day yet."

She turned back, knowing what the younger girl had in mind from the way she leaned towards Korra's presence across the yard. She knew that healing time was not to be interrupted, for Korra felt wildly vulnerable while Katara was working on her, and that if Jinora went over there, with her natural energy and her new duties, she was likely to set the weakened Avatar into a seriously bad day, whether or not it was one already.

"I notice," she inclined her head, deftly redirecting the conversation as she would a business deal, "That you're back to your old wooden staff."

Jinora chewed her lip and nodded softly, practically shuffling her feet in a manner unbefitting a Master Air Bender, "Y- yeah. It's not that the Sato ones aren't nice, because they REALLY are! It's just…."

"That the wood feels more organic to you than our ultra-lightweight aluminum and silk staves do," Asami sighed.

"Yeah." The air nomad admitted with an apologetic tone. "I mean, Korra might like yours; once she's strong enough to fly again... she likes those sleek fast ones and the aluminum staves are wickedly fast. But most of us Nomads really prefer the bollywood gliders."

"I know, Boomi loves his… except he keeps crashing them," Asami laughed sadly, thinking of the elderly man who piloted like his britches were on fire, "I finally cut him off after the fourth one, because I thought he was going to break his neck!"

Still she sighed. The aluminum staves were her first real design as head of Sato Industries; the first item to have solely her stamp on them rather than the corrupted influence of her father and the Equalist engineers. She'd based them not on the bollywood gliders used at the Air Temples, but on the spring-loaded Mechanist staff that Korra had inherited from her predecessor Aang. She'd replaced impermanent and fragile wood with the newest wonder metal aluminum, and substituted the clockwork spring loading mechanism with a more reliable magnetic system that wouldn't jam when deployed at high speed.

To know that they were sitting largely unused by the very people she'd created them for stung a bit.

Exhaling, she tapped her pencil against the table and again looked to Korra. She was definitely not the traditional bender. Maybe Jinora was right and she would like the staves, if presented one in the right frame of mind. Right now she seemed to want nothing to do with bending at all; doubly so the Air Nomads of Tenzin's family.

"And maybe there is a market for them among non-nomad air benders," She completed the thought out loud as she returned a smile to Jinora. "Anyway, if you're here, I bet you're hungry… let's get some breakfast before the boys show up!"

"But, shouldn't we get Korra if we're going to eat?" The teenaged master questioned openly as she followed Asami from the piazza towards the Sato mansion.

"Er…" Asami frowned, looking back to where the Avatar lay, so boneless as to almost be sleeping, "She usually doesn't have any appetite after healing sessions."

So it was a small lie. What did Jinora need to know if Korra was so moody after her sessions that she only took meals in her room no matter how many times Asami, Mako, or Bolin asked her otherwise.

 **\- LoK-**

Katara calmly considered the small crystal vial. It was one of her more rare healing tools, and only brought out for special cases. An Avatar poisoned by liquid metal to within an inch of her life was one of those occasions.

She slowly shook the carved quartz phial, studying the healing water she had trapped inside with her eyes, and feeling its energies with her fingers and her spirit. After a long moment, she nodded, sitting back from her crouch over Korra.

"I think we're done here." She slowly began putting her water skin and the phials back into her worn old traveling kit.

Korra groaned. The sun was beating down on her tan back, and made her want nothing more than to fall asleep, as it had for most of the healing session. Gingerly she levered herself up onto her elbows, feeling a shiver run up and down her spine, where the healing work had been concentrated today. "So I'll see you tonight then."

She was badly wanting to lay right back down and go to sleep in the sun here on the deck of the Sato's pool, but she also was in no mood to be lectured by the old healer either, so she continued to push herself up; until finally, with some grunting and shaking of limbs, she managed to force herself into the lotus position, resting her hands on her knees.

"No Korra, dear," the wizened old healer shook her head as she rose from sheiza, moving almost as slowly as her charge on her eighty-six year old knees, "I mean that you have progressed as far as you can under my care. There's nothing more that I can do for you."

Instantly the young Avatar's head swam. She wobbled backwards and had to plant a hand firmly beneath her, breaking her lotus position to keep from falling over. "Wh- what do you mean?"

Whatever Katara meant, she was apparently to busy folding up the bamboo mat Korra had been lying on to clarify. As she waited for a response, the Avatar's mind whirled with the implications. Was this all the stronger she would ever be? Barely able to sit upright? Confined to a wheel chair, complexion ashen and hair so brittle it occasionally came out in her hand?!"

When the old water tribe woman continued not to respond, Korra became almost panicky. Finally she slapped her hand down on the pool deck, focusing her fear and anger outwards before it consumed her from within, "Katara, what do you mean?!"

With a world-weary sigh, the elderly healer held up the cut crystal phial full of clear water, "I mean, there is nothing more traditional healing sessions can do to repair your body, or your mind. Your body has rid itself of the last of the damaged tissues the quicksilver wounded. I could work on you from now until the end of days, and you would get no more benefit from it than a bit of a sun tan."

"So… I'm… I'm stuck like this." She chewed her lip bitterly, looking away.

With reluctant finality she reached out for the foot pedal of her wheel chair, preparing to pull herself up and into it.

Only for Katara to use her walking stick to nudge it out of reach. Korra scowled darkly and forced herself to crawl forward after the chair, "Don't… I am in no mood."

It was an unspoken part of the healing regimen, to force Korra to work even for those tools she used to move about in her infirmity. Today, however, she had no patience for unspoken games and ephemeral messages.

"If you're in no mood, then get into your chair and put on a blanket like an old woman," Again the elderly healer nudged the wheelchair just out of the invalid Avatar's grasp.

Korra scowled, and pushed herself forward more firmly, using her practically immobile legs now as well as her arms. This time she succeeded in touching the front wheel before Katara nudged it away down the pool deck.

Growling, the avatar gave the elderly woman a scathing look, "I am not kidding. If you can't do me any good, then leave. I'm not going to be teased."

She latched her hand around the wheel, feeling hot and angry and ashamed that a little old woman was not only besting her, but making her crawl for her reward like some prisoner.

And just as soon as she had got her hands around the foot pedal of the chair, it was whipped out of her grasp with a telltale whirr, "If you're not going to be teased, you should at least get up off of the ground to make it more difficult."

It was the familiar iron tone of Linn Bei Fong. Korra allowed her head to fall to the tile work and tried not to sob in frustration.

"After all, if even a nearly century old woman can tease you along like some street beggar, clearly you are making it too easy." The chief of police cooly remarked as she retracted her cabling back into her glove and worked the handle of the wheel chair back and forth.

"Yes, it is rather disappointing, isn't it?" the darker skinned elder joined in, slowly moving past her former charge, "Here I am, in my golden years, and I'm still nurse-maiding to an Avatar."

Korra grit her teeth, hiding her face against the tiles and beneath her stringy hair. Why wouldn't they just go away and let her be?

"To be such an insulting burden on one of the matrons of Republic City… honestly Korra." Chief Bei Fong chided before shoving the wheelchair right past her into the pool.

"ENOUGH!" Korra slapped her hand down on the pool deck and forced her eyes upwards. Then she did it again as she glared, tears streaming down her cheeks at the two gray haired old women, "Enough of both of you! I've just been told that I can't be healed anymore and you stand here teasing me about it like a couple of fire nation bullies?! ENOUGH!"

She glared at them through her tears, only to see that they were not even looking at her. Sniffing, and grunting with the very effort, she forced herself to roll over and look where the two elders were looking. Ripples were spreading out across the surface of the pool, at the bottom of which sat her wheelchair, completely beyond her ability to recover now.

In her strained and spent anger, it took her a long moment to realize that the ripples were not right. They were not coming from the spot where the chair had careened into the pool, but instead from the center of the large rectangular body of water.

Slowly Korra looked down at her hand where she had been petulantly smacking the pool deck. "I… I bent? I haven't been able to so much as bubble water in two months!"

"That was quite a splash for an invalid…" Linn nodded, looking at the tiles at her feet, which were damp just shy of her boots. "Apparently you just needed the right motivation."

Katara nodded softly, and then struck a stance. With smooth movements born of a lifetime of grace, she danced and gestured, and levitated a sphere of water free of the pool, perfectly containing the insulted wheelchair.

Setting it down and allowing the water to drain away from it, she slowly shuffled over to the petulant young Avatar, "I never said you were done healing, Korra… I said there was nothing more that I could do for you."

Linn set the locks on the Avatar's chair, and then the two older women helped the stricken younger one up and into it.

She instantly made a face as she felt her clothing soaked through and clutched at the arms of the chair, "Ack it's still wet!"

"Consider that just punishment for acting like a spoiled Earth Princess," Linn huffed disdainfully, "Honestly, yelling at Katara like that because you're a little scared? It's dishonorable."

The water-bending Avatar hung her head ashamedly at that and finally looked around to see if anyone else had noticed her tantrum. Fortunately, if any of Asami's staff had been around for it, they were absent now. Sighing wearily, she took out a comb the heiress had given her, and slowly began to pick through her hair, trying to straighten it.

"So… if Katara can't heal me anymore, what do I do now?"

"If Lady Katara can't help you," Linn began with a sneer at the very young woman addressing her elders so informally, only to feel a hand rested on her wrist. She looked to her own elder and sighed shaking her head, "If Katara can't help you, then obviously you need to ask who else can."

Korra frowned. She was tired, and she was sore, and now she was cold from the water soaking her wheelchair. She was really in no mood for mind games. "Alrighty then… just who else can heal someone with my particular needs?"

"You don't need healing, Korra, you need training." The elderly water bender corrected as she gently began to push the Avatar along, using the wheelchair to support herself in the process.

"Fine then," the impatient and weary young Avatar huffed, "who can 'train' me?"

Then she paused. Just why the heck was Linn here anyway? It wasn't like she was exactly on a first name basis with Katara to be sharing a tea date, and neither Korra nor Asami had called her in, and Varrick was on house arrest, so it was not like she was here on police business involving Sato industries and the former Varrick Global holdings.

Then she smacked her face into the palm of her hand as she realized what was going on. "Oh no…. nonononono."

"Korra," Katara cautioned as she pushed the Avatar towards the mansion, "Linn is disciplined, intelligent, and has some medical training. She is the best person in Republic City to help you to get your body back in to shape."

"I'll use the Bending Gym at the arena!" Korra challenged. "It's been rebuilt right?!"

"The bending gym is set up for professional benders." Linn corrected swiftly, "Not convalescents. As you just said, you can barely bubble water, let alone bend at a competition level."

"Then I'll train with Mako and Bolin!" the southerner scowled, adjusting herself in the chair. "They know me and fought right at my side for almost two years."

"Neither of them have any medical experience, and Mako is very busy with his police duties." Katara offered.

"Oh, and Linn isn't?" the Avatar sneered.

"No… I'm on leave until President Raiko decides how he wants to handle restructuring the Department." Chief Bei Fong offered a bit uncertainly.

"Restructuring?" Korra tilted her head, managing to turn a bit to look at the older woman.

"With the Air Nomads flying all around, and with the three liason officers I sent from the PD to the Earth Kingdom, the Mayor wants to investigate how best for the City's forces to handle working with people from the outside."

"Yeah, because he completely ignored the Water Tribe Civil War AND Harmonic Convergence and we see where that got this town," Korra sneered at that thought, gripping the arms of her chair.

"He did not ~ignore~ either thing," the Chief barked, but then lowered her voice, "But obviously his handling of external affairs, and by extension mine, left much to be desired in both cases. So I have a lot of time on my hands while the Reconstruction Council decides what direction they want to take the police force in."

The young southerner sighed and shook her head. "I'm not getting out of training with Linn am I?"

"Well, you could appeal to Lord Zuko," Katara offered with a slight smirk, "But his seat on the council is largely ceremonial."

Korra groaned as they wheeled her inside the mansion and toward the direction of the smell of food.

"Um… I usually take my morning meal in my room," She attempted to correct the course, going so far as to try and steer her chair toward the Satovator that lead there.

"Not anymore you don't," was all Linn said as she wheeled the damp Avatar into the sitting room, much to the surprise of Asami and Jinora.

 **-LoK-**


End file.
